


To Become Harley Quinn

by FujinoLover



Series: Harley and Ivy [5]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020), Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, I don't know how to slowburn, Mental Health Issues, Psychosis, What-If, Why Did I Write This?, fastburn, sorta enemies to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25377409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FujinoLover/pseuds/FujinoLover
Summary: Harley’s origin story, with less Joker and more Poison Ivy.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, Poison Ivy/Harley Quinn
Series: Harley and Ivy [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824364
Comments: 4
Kudos: 93





	To Become Harley Quinn

_“I am not someone who is loved.”_

Harleen’s head snaps up when she hears the clap. She turns around, catching the flutter of green. No matter how fast she follows it, it stays out of her reach.

Fed up with the game, she stomps her foot. “You’re not leaving me,” she cries, swallowed by the hollow in the empty processing plant. “You’re _not_ leaving me!”

The green is behind her. She darts for it, hand reaching out for nothing. Her feet stutter to a stop near the edge of the platform, vats of chemicals boiling underneath. His laugh fills her head.

_“I’m an idea. State of mind. I execute my will, according to my plan, and you, doctor, are not part of my plan.”_

She stays, but turns her body around slowly. She can see him now. He is standing in front of her, in his shimmering dark suit and white skin and green hair. The most beautiful, misunderstood person she ever had the pleasure of knowing, her Clown Prince of Crime.

He laughs—God, she loves his laugh. He is looking at her then, only at her, like she’s his whole world. He lifts his arms like he is waiting for her to run to him, but she knows better. She is smart, she has a PhD. She knows he will move away again if she went after him, so she takes a step back instead. His smile widens and her heart soars under his approval.

Harleen smiles. “I’ll be seein’ ya soon, Mistah J.” And falls back to the vat with a loud splash.

_“Question. Would you die for me?”_

_Yes._

_“That’s too easy. Would you… Would you live for me? Hmm?”_

_Yes._

_“Careful. Do not say this oath thoughtlessly. Desire becomes surrender, surrender becomes power. You want this?”_

_I do._

_“Say it. Say it. Say it. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty—”_

_Please._

_“God, you’re so…good.”_

Harleen doesn’t open her eyes, can’t gasp for breath no matter how much her lungs scream for her to. She can’t swim, but she kicks her legs all the same. The thick liquid makes every stroke heavier than the last one, as though it is sticking and clinging to drag her deeper. She pushes harder until her head breaks through the surface and she takes greedy gulps of fresh air.

Every inch of her body is burning, telling her to give up, to lie back and let the bubbling chemicals engulfs her in a melting embrace. Her shirt dyes the liquid in blue as she moves through. Now the thickness helps her stays afloat. She’s living for him. Her hand reaches one of steel ladders built on the side of the vat and she heaves herself up to the edge, where she slips and falls to the ground with a heavy wet splat.

It could have been hours or even days before she comes back to herself. Her whole body is still burning and aching, head pounding from breathing in the toxic fumes for too long, but she survives. She lives. For him. So she laughs and laughs and laughs until tears stream down her cheeks and cleanses her eyes. She brings herself to sit, to stand, and then to walk. Thick droplets mark her way out of the plant and into the night’s soothing air.

Can’t live with him, can’t live without him. But she is living _for_ him. At least long enough to exact her revenge. She will avenge his death. She’s going to kill Poison Ivy.

* * *

It is a good kind of night. The smog still hanging low, but the drizzle in the afternoon blessed Gotham with lighter air. After a successful robbery job, Harley is skipping her way to the next park. With her trusty mallet over her shoulder, she is ready to wreck more havoc. She is laughing at a funny story Mistah J is telling her, about the security guard of a bank he was robbing that went boom on his way out and bathed Gotham’s finest in red.

“Aaw. I shoulda brought some explosive.” She giggles. “Maybe next time.”

She sees the grin Mistah J sports, red lips stretch wide and she can’t help but mirror. She likes where they are with their relationship. He is mostly real nowadays. She still can’t touch him—he is shy, she thinks that’s so endearing—but he stays with her and she doesn’t need anyone else. Only him. The way he’s always staring at her makes her skin prickles with warmth and longing, maybe later he can watch her—

“Mistah J?”

He has stopped, hissing as he looks ahead. Harley follows his line of sight into Gotham’s National Museum. There is nothing unusual of the dark building, until she sees the vines crowding on its roof. Mistah J is gone when she turns to him. She grits her teeth, gripping her mallet tight in her hands as she sprints straight to the front door. Raising the weapon over her head, she swings it forward in full force. The glass doors shattering breaks through the night’s silence, followed a second after by the loud blaring of the alarm.

Grinning, Harley takes off to round the building. The cops will be there soon, she has five minutes top, and so does her target. That should be enough. Turning into the dark alley behind the building, she sees the pink convertible first and the green second.

Without making a noise, she swerves to the building next to the museum and uses the momentum to spring herself up to its fire escape. Down on the alley, Poison Ivy is too busy lining her bounty in the backseat of the convertible, urged by the alarm and none of the wiser of her creeping presence. With a war cry, she flings herself off the fire escape directly into the unsuspecting metahuman.

The mallet misses its mark, stuck on the body of the convertible. Its long handle broke into two from impact, so Harley is quick to discard it. She shoots ahead to grab fistfuls of red, its owner cries in pain when her knee kisses her face. They stumble and tumble on the wet alley in a blur of green, red, and black. The element of surprise works well for Harley, but she’s surprised to find her next attacks blocked. She has assumed that Ivy is not big on hand-to-hand combat, simply because she never saw her in action and when she does jobs, she stays back on her throne of giant flower and lets her vines do everything.

Despite the disadvantage, all Harley has to do is not giving Ivy any time to use her power. Using her agility, she overwhelms her in a series of punch and kicks while skipping away from the vines that try to grab her like giant tentacles. The dance goes on until she’s out of breath and has Poison fucking Ivy pinned on the wall of the museum with an arm on her neck.

Even with the flurry of the fight just moments ago, there remains no sign of injury on green skin. Ivy stands, unperturbed other than the slight tousle on her red mane and the arm choking her. The lack of oxygen doesn’t bother her, the pores on her skin works as respiration organs far more effectively, so she takes her sweet time to regard her attacker. Recognition doesn’t come in an instant. She notices the cowl and the mask, the white painted face, the hatred in common blue eyes, the jester suit, and the feminine shape wrapped in red and black.

“Ya fuckin’ bitch!”

The thick accent that carries the words isn’t familiar either, but it is the voice that Ivy will always recognize. Three times a week in talk therapy during her recent stay in Arkham, in which she didn’t utter more than a handful of words but her psychiatrist had more than enough to fill in the silence she left hanging in the room.

“Doctor Quinzel?”

Ivy might be surprised, but her physiology has adapted to the attack the moment she was jumped. Her blood becomes acidic enough to melt flesh clean off the bones while her skin emits a deadly cocktail of toxin and vaporous paralytic agent. The arm against her neck is burning. She can feel spandex and skin melting, smoke coming from the contact. The peppery scent surrounding her doesn’t help either.

“It’s Harley Fucking Quinn!”

With a cuss and a well-aimed spit, Harley retracts like a spring, cradling her raw forearm into her chest. Her feet never touch the ground. Vines snatch her mid-air, wrap around her wrists and ankles, and pull her tight on every direction.

Ivy steps forward, eyes glowing bright and teeth bared in a scowl. She doesn’t bother to wipe the saliva splattering on her cheek; it evaporates on its own. One green hand comes forward to take hold of Harley’s neck, turning the table entirely.

Harley is crying, both from the pepper irritating her eyes and where the situation is heading. She isn’t afraid to die—she _wants_ to die. There is no meaning or reason to live anymore. She fails on avenging Mistah J. She is nothing but a disappointment. She doesn’t deserve him. She misses him so bad, but now she gets to see him soon.

Poison Ivy is going to finish what a vat of bubbling chemicals couldn’t do. As darkness creeps on the corners of her vision, she wonders if the green metahuman will make a statement with her as well, or if she would just toss her aside to rot in a dark alley like the useless crap she is.

Ivy feels the moment the fight left Harley’s body, too fast to be the work of her paralytic. The ever expressive blue eyes that she now recognizes are glassy with tears. There is hatred still, but also pain and sadness and desperation—all of which she knows the reason for: the Joker’s death on her hand.

She was there, escaping Arkham as well, after his goons came in blasting with machine guns that someone in the inside had provided. She then heard from the grapevine about Doctor Quinzel, the overload ECT therapy, and her new life of crime. It is a pity for such a young and brilliant woman to fall for a madman. She was that woman once, manipulated and used and turned into who she is now.

Ivy’s hold on Harley’s neck falters. Her thumb strays to wipe on a sharp jaw and it doesn’t come back smeared with white paint. Her gasp is so soft it gets carried by the wind like a disappointed sigh. She should have killed the Joker faster.

“What had he done to you...”

“He didn’t do nothin’.” Harley spats again. A mixture of tears and snot adds to the projectile, splats on the ground next to Ivy’s feet. “It was _my_ choice!”

Ivy considers ending her pain. She has no qualm in killing her, or any other human in that matter. Her vine slitters to wrap around Harley’s neck, just a snap away from breaking the bones or sprouting a thorn to inject toxin straight into her jugular artery. At the very least, she respects her enough to not drag it out.

“Is this what you really want, Harley?”

Over Ivy’s shoulder, Harley sees Mistah J. He looks disgusted, like she is unworthy. “Puddin’,” she croaks, but he turns around and walks away. “Puddin’ wait—No, don’t leave me—”

Ivy, knowing for sure that the Joker is dead and there is no one behind her, sighs with pity. Plucking a new bloom from her hair, she blows the pollens at Harley. She watches as her ex-psychiatrist coughs and chokes before going limp against the vines.

* * *

At some point through Harley’s misguided attempt to get the attention she deserves, she is naughty enough to attract Batman to go after her. Just one meeting and she clocks who he is under the cowl and the suit, had in fact made herself familiar with those pecs years ago. Bruce Wayne and Harleen slept together several times back in med school, before he dropped out to traipse around the world with different woman on his arm each night. For all the rich-white-playboy image he showed to the world, deep inside he was only an angry little boy trying to make sense of the sudden lost of his parents.

Bruce was nice to her—too nice, in fact, that she couldn’t stand him. He still does, even as Batman, even while he tries to stop her schemes and watches her burning buildings and killing not-so-innocent people. He can overpower her easily, beat her until she submits to him, but he chooses to cuff her with a silly piece of metal shaped like a bat that she easily unlocks with a hairpin.

“Yer too nice, Batsy.” _Brucey_ is what she actually wants to say, but they are not old buddies Harleen and Bruce with the suits on. It’s Harley Quinn and Batman. “Izzit ‘cause you fuck bats?” She snickers, jumps off the building and parkours along the rooftops before he can reply. Again, he lets her go too easily.

The other man in her current life, however, isn’t as kind. Her alliance—if she could even call a relationship with a man whose Brita she once peed on as an alliance—with Roman Sionis is pure out of business. Two clusters Bs together is a recipe for petty insults and recurrent dick-size rivalries.

She is no longer welcomed in the Iceberg Lounge after the last time she was there, she kinda shot Penguin, to death, but hey, she was drunk, okay? It was a total accident. Since she needed a new watering hole to get her free drinks and the rest of city’s bars and clubs have banned her from entering out of fear, Roman welcomed her in his Black Mask club. Really, it’s just his needs to be the center of the attention that made him extends the proverbial alcohol-drenched olive branch to her. She’s just there for the free drinks, chatting with Karen the annoying mannequin who surprisingly gives sound advice, and watching the performance of her friend/roommate/confidante and as of ten minutes ago, ex fuck buddy.

Dinah puts them on an end on Tuesday night, already sore but willing to put out one more time for a goodbye fuck. The longer Harley obsesses over the recluse Poison Ivy, the more frustrated she becomes and there is only so much fucking a woman can take. They sit in the kitchen afterwards. Harley, who doesn’t notice nor bothered by their broken glassware, is drinking cereal from the blender.

“Just plant one on her already.”

Harley mumbles something that suspiciously sounds like _good pun_ , if the way her eyes squint and the thumb up are any indication. She licks the last of the bright pink milk, slams the blender on the table, and burps. Sometimes Dinah can’t believe she actually fucked _that_.

“It’s her phero-thingie, I told ‘cha.”

How Ivy’s pheromone can affect Harley when they haven’t met each other since that one time months ago is beyond Dinah. But Harley insists and she isn’t known for her stellar logic anyway. It is the way she boasts about I’m-going-to-kill-Poison-Ivy but doesn’t do anything about that, other than smashing things and getting drunk and then oddly turned on, that annoys Dinah.

“And I’ve told you that her magic doesn’t work on women.”

“You don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“I do know for sure. I sat next to her once.”

Harley’s eyes are wild and she is quick to point an accusing finger at Dinah. “You back-stabbin’ traitor!” she cries out.

All Dinah does is cocking a brow as she takes a slow drag from the cigarette on her lips, watching Harley grows angrier each second. She has kept that piece of information to herself because she wasn’t sure Harley was ready to admit that her hatred for Ivy has become something else entirely. Apparently Harley will never be ready and she really can’t take more of her creepy obsession with the green woman, so she comes clean.

“I was waitressing in the Iceberg Lounge.”

“You got on the VIP floor before _I_ did?”

A series of thumping and muffled shouts come from the apartment underneath theirs, but neither woman pays attention to it. Funny how the little man living downstairs never raised a protest whenever they were fucking loudly. It’s only when Harley gets in her shrieking mode that he objects.

“I was _waitressing_ and some goons think he’s good enough to demand me to sit on his laps.”

Dinah stubs what is left of her cigarette and takes account of Harley’s skeptical look. So Dinah saved her drunk-ass from two men who were trying to take advantage of her, kicking them on the balls and all of that, like a sexy knight in tight gold pants. That was how they met.

“I was young, Harls. It was my first job. I was too scared to say no. Then Poison Ivy asked me sit in her booth and I was crappin’ my pants.”

Harley is honest-to-God _pouting_. “But she _hates_ people,” she whines.

Dinah doesn’t point out the obvious—that at the very least, Poison Ivy has tolerated Harley’s annoying presence in Gotham and she knows for sure how irritating her friend can be. “You know how she came to be who she is.” It’s public knowledge after all. Poison Ivy is a misanthrope who only cares for plants, but she never shies away from standing up for fellow women when they are being harassed by men in her presence. “She made sure none of her uncovered skin touched mine.” She adds to drive her point through, “I breathed in her flowery scent for three fucking minutes before Cobblepot came over.” Ivy had in return demanded the removal of the goons, Joker’s goons apparently, or else she would take the matter in her own vines and rip their dicks off. Cobblepot was smart enough to agree with the metahuman.

Harley mumbles something.

Fortunately, Dinah has been around her long enough to be able to decipher it. “No, Harls. I had a _girlfriend_ then. Her power just doesn’t work on women, straight or not.”

“How old were ya?”

The sudden change of topic doesn’t faze Dinah anymore. It’s not even a far jump than she usually does. She has lived with Harley for months, or rather, she lets Harley crash in her place after she saved her and she just never leaves since. At least she pays her part of the rent, sometimes even enough to cover for both of them—masked criminals are lucrative jobs in Gotham after all.

“Eighteen, nineteen.”

“And Red?”

Instead of asking back _who the hell is Red?_ , because who else Harley ever talks about other than Ivy, the question actually gets Dinah thinking. “Thirty somethin’?” In fact, she is sure her late mother talked about Poison Ivy when she was still a teen. “Didn’t you read her personal file back in Arkham?”

“It’s rude to dig a woman’s age, ya know.” Harley’s face lights up with realization, ignoring Dinah’s raised brow at her hypocritical statement. “Shit, I beat a grandma!”

Dinah chuckles. “More like _you_ were beaten by a grandma.”

“It gotta be her plant thingy.” Harley lets out a low whistle. “I’d tap every grandma if they looked like that in their eighties.”

At that, Dinah makes a disgusted face. She’s sure Poison Ivy is unnaturally older than both of them, but she can’t be _that_ old, right? Harley’s tendency to exaggerate can be gross sometimes. Shaking the thought away, she stands up and brings the dirty blender to the sink. Her friend never understands the concept of washing the dishes she used when she’s going to use it again anyway.

“My point still stands, Harls.” Dinah swats the wandering hand fondling her ass. She doesn’t need to look back to know that Harley is pouting but soon gets distracted by the suds transferred from their contact. “Stop fuckin’ around and just fuck her already.”

So Harley does.

Ivy’s red-and-green appearance screams _danger_ , but she is stealthy. Other than that one lucky time Harley found her mid-heist, no one realizes she’s pulled a job until some precious specimens or toxins are missing or the whole newly-replaced board members of some industry is liquefied into green puddles. Every Gothamite knows where Ivy is, but no one has really seen her in person.

Harley doesn’t really understand why she avoids facing Ivy for so long. Last time she wasn’t strong enough and lost Mistah J. Maybe she just doesn’t want to lose another part of herself or because psychologically speaking, vengeance rarely brings the catharsis anyone hopes for. Without Dinah giving her the attention she craves, though, she has no other choice than to rob a flower shop. She gets over dozens of flowers, mostly roses, and scatters the cuts on the opening of Ivy’s kingdom in Robinson Park. It is a literal dick move. Nothing says _I hate you_ to a plant-hybrid better than throwing cut off plant’s reproductive organs on her turf.

Her glee lasts only for a day. When she goes to check on her handiwork the next day, all of the flowers has actually grown and rooted itself as full bushes. She considers burning the park next, but there are some curious vines and Venus Humantraps leaning on her direction. Before she can flee the premises, one vine catches up with her. She screams all the way up to the tree, where the animated plant decides to hang her upside down.

“What do you want?” comes the ominous question from within the woods.

The grin is immediate. It has to do with all the blood rushing to her head, Harley’s sure. It’s kinda hard to concentrate in her current position, but Poison Ivy is there, standing just a few feet away from her, looking like a tree nymph straight out of Greek mythology. She is barefooted, her previous green spandex leotard now made up of actual foliage with vines curling around her wooden limbs, and leaves scattered in her wild red mane. She’s greener than Harley has ever seen her before.

“I’ll ask again. What do you want?”

Harley blurts out the first thing that comes to her mind, “To fuck ya!”

She wiggles, using her weight to start swinging back and forth. It’s not far enough to reach Ivy’s position, but the vines surrounding her body tightens itself like a deadly anaconda. Ivy is getting closer and when she’s close enough, Harley musters her whole strength to slam the only part of her body that still can move. Her forehead meets Ivy’s shoulder in a feeble attempt of a headbutt. Ivy ignores the bump and proceeds to pluck another bloom from her hair.

“Oh, no no no.”

Harley’s protest falls on deaf ears as Ivy again blows the flower to her and everything goes dark. She wakes up sitting on the branch of the tree, which she immediately slips off from, with flailing arms and a screech, the moment she regains consciousness. The rose bush underneath pillows her fall, but its thorns cut all over her jester suit. Before she can untangle herself—a part of her fears that the bush is going to chew her soon—something falls on her head and bounces to her abdomen.

Grabbing the offending item, Harley frowns at the apple in her hand. Is it a good idea to eat a dubious fruit that a green metahuman obviously gifts her? No. Is she hungry after being knocked out by said metahuman? Yes, very. So she takes a bite. The worse it’ll do is kill her, but it’s not a Disney movie. Ivy is not a witch and she’s not Snow White.

They are, apparently, more of a reiteration of Persephone and Hades with the pomegranate seeds. The next day Harley comes over to the park again—without exactly knowing why, other than to show off her new get-up because her jester suit got ruined by the rose bush—Ivy is already standing under the tree waiting for her.

* * *

Harley paces along the length of the clearing, just a little hidden away from the opening of Robinson Park. Ivy is late—not that they have set times to meet, but Ivy always knows when Harley is around, probably the traitorous plants telling her. Anyway, Ivy is still not there while Harley has arrived about one minute ago and with each second passes she becomes surer that she might have fucked it up for good this time.

With a loud groan, Harley back flips into a handstand and starts walking with her back straight, the dyed tips of her pigtails drag over the grass. All the blood rushing into her head and the extortion in keeping her body in balance are supposed to calm her down, yet she can’t stop thinking about Ivy.

The last time they met, she might have, by total accident, heat of the moment kind of impulsive move, ripped a handful of leaves off Ivy’s chest. It earned her another treatment of pollens. She hates being knocked out like that, but she guesses it’s better than being beaten to unconsciousness, even though Ivy actually growled when the leaves were ripped off.

It must have felt like unwanted waxing of chest hair, which is sucks, which is why Harley brought this little pot of cactus she stole from the apartment next door. It’s almost dead, perfect. Ivy’s savior complex will be satiated once she brings the plant back to life and then she’ll forgive her. It’s a foolproof plan.

“What are you doing?”

“Red!” Harley bows her elbows and uses her biceps to spring her up, flipping in the air before landing on her feet. “I need yer help!”

Ivy lifts a brow. Normally they would have exchanged at least a few blows by now. Harley has the pure talent of pissing people off and she’s still on the path of revenge for the Joker, although it is a narrow and dwindling one. Ivy just doesn’t want her screaming her head off (she did) or kicking the trees (she did too) just to annoy and lure her out.

“Oh. Wow.”

Harley halts, her ploy forgotten as she takes in Ivy. The metahuman has yet again changed her outfit. A skin-tight black bodysuit with patches of living grass (or is it moss?) accentuating it. It covers all of her, except for her head and hands. Instead of her chlorophyll-tinted skin, she is tan with green-tinged lips and nails. She looks far more human than before.

“What do you need my help with?”

The plants surrounding them are agitated. Ivy might not dart her eyes around, but Harley can tell that she’s suspicious. So she closes her mouth, cartwheels to where she keeps the cactus by a tree, and runs back to Ivy.

“Bela is dying!”

For one second, Ivy thinks it’s an actual human and steps back out of instinct, but Harley has pretty much shoved the small terracotta pot to her. The tension leaves her body when she sees the small cactus and she takes the pot over, cooing at the shriveling _Mammillaria spinosissima_. Just a touch on its pricks, the cactus abandons its droop, growing twice its size and even blooms a pretty pink flower on its tip. Harley is still standing close, too engrossed with the plant transformation to notice Ivy little smirk, until the cactus hauls itself out of the pot and jumps at her.

“Eep!” She tucks and rolls, grabbing her bat on the way. She is ready to smack the hell out of the ungrateful little prick, but the plant is running deeper into the park. “What the fuck is that?”

Ivy ignores the question and lifts an arm in Harley’s direction. With a flick of her wrist, the rose bushes surrounding the clearing burst out to grab Harley at once, thornless, or else her bleached skin would be littered with cuts. Her black and red short shorts and crop top do very little to cover her, but hey, they look really great on her.

“Finally have the gall to kill me?”

Ivy doesn’t react to the taunt. “May I inject this serum on you, Harley?” She holds up a filled-up syringe for Harley to observe.

Harley scoffs. She has vines wrapped around her limbs, which she can escape if she wanted to, she did that at least thrice before and Ivy always let her. It was their game. _This_ isn’t in the script, but Harley is curious. Something small in her chest tingles like longing from thinking that the ominous green liquid in the syringe can kill her. Something else hurts in the same area, shoving the tingle to a curb. The vines let her go, slinking back to its mistress. Ivy is still looking at her, still holding up the syringe.

Harley squints with suspicion. “What izzit?”

“A vaccine.”

“Like rabies vaccine?”

Ivy fails to understand why rabies is the first thing that came to Harley’s mind. “Like flu shot,” she corrects.

“Okay.”

The nonchalant makes Ivy twitch a brow. “I’d assumed as a doctor yourself, you’d be more wary of an unidentified compound going in your system.”

Harley simply shrugs. “I trust ya.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ya coulda killed me when we met. And lotta times after.” Harley drops her bat. “You didn’t ‘cause you saw yourself in me. You sympathized. That’s a very human—”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” Ivy snaps, but her anger vanishes just as fast. “Give me your arm.”

Harley stretches her arm forward with a pout. She holds on her breath once Ivy steps closer. A small hitch breaks through her throat when Ivy’s hand takes hold of her elbow. She is deadly pale, almost translucent, it should be easy to locate her veins. Fingertips dance over the sensitive skin on the crook of her elbow, surprisingly sun-kissed warm, and she flails her free arm about with a muffled protest.

Ivy halts her search, looks up to see Harley has her cheeks puffed and her face bright red. “What are you doing?” she asks for the second time, with more mirth than before. Harley’s antics never fail to amuse her.

Harley turns her head to face the other side before she pants, greedily feeding the much-needed air to her lungs. “Your peppery—” her head perks up, nose sniffs the air as if she was some kind of bloodhound. “Wait. No pepper?”

It is the part of Ivy that she hates the most—she can’t get close to her without crying her eyes out. She will never win any fight when Ivy is practically a giant can of pepper spray with tentacles. Their session always ends with her either crying or unconscious. This time, though, Ivy has taken on smelling like soothing lavender. While Harley is sufficiently distracted by the calming scent, she injects the shot.

“Hey! You—” before Harley can finish her sentence, Ivy plants a hand on the middle of her chest and pushes her away. Her quick reflex saves her from tumbling onto her ass. “What the fuck is wrong with ya?” She knows Ivy has mood swings sometimes, but it is worse today and she’s not up to be jerked around in her emotional whiplash.

Again, a rose vine shoots forward. Harley ducks the swipe over her head before rolling over when a group of vines tries to stomps her to the ground. She comes out to have a good time and she’s literally being attacked right now. “Look, I get that you’re still mad about your chest hair—“ A whole bunch of vines twist into one and aims at her “Leaves! Your chest leaves!” She cartwheels a safe distance away. “But love the new look. Got ya a minion. And I let ya play doctor.”

“Wasn’t that because you trust me?” Ivy mocks.

“That too!”

Rolling her eyes, Ivy calls for even more vines to join her. Harley swats her bat around, grinning and laughing all the way like a maniac as she hits each tendril that’s reaching for her. Her agility is on par with how fast Ivy can move her plants. However, one sneaky vine catches her ankle and jerks her back. She falls face first, cushioned by the thickened grass.

Ivy is _playing_ with her. Harley growls against the grass tickling her face. She underestimates her, like everyone does. Harley is used to it. She’ll show them just how wrong they are. Instead of yielding, she brings her tied leg up and rips the motherfucker with her teeth. She flips back to her feet, kicks the wiggling vine away, and spits out whatever plant juice it leaves in her mouth.

Looking up at her opponent as she wipes her lips with the back of her hand, she expects to see an enraged Ivy, but the redhead seems pleased. Harley doesn’t get to guess whatever that supposed to mean. In the next second, Ivy drops her control of the vines and charges forward herself.

“Bring it on, Poison Oakie!”

Even with her blind enthusiasm, Harley fails to evade Ivy’s attack fast enough. Green nails scratch over her cheek, but she doesn’t have time to worry about her flesh falling off because Ivy brings her left leg up, almost hitting her square on the crotch. _Almost_. In return, she sweeps her bat low on the ground and hits Ivy’s ankle, hard enough for her to tumble back.

It’s much like they were back in Arkham doing their three times a week therapy, except with some talking (still from Harley) and a lot more touching. The dumbass who wrote Ivy’s file definitely never had to face her in hand-to-hand combat because it’s a total bullshit. There is the flexibility of a gymnast in her move, but also real martial art. Being a super villain who has lived for too long, she’s bound to collect some skills. Harley really can’t wait to top her.

Ivy is clearly more on the offensive today. Harley has to use her forearm to block a high kick aiming for her head. That will leave a nasty bruise, but she takes hold of her calf and yanks her down, finally manages to drop her to the ground. She cheers even as she evades the tip of Ivy’s heel, too delighted with her small victory to put a safe distance between them.

Thus when Ivy flips back to her feet with the same ease as she did, they are standing less than an arm length away from each other. Ivy is quick to grab on her cheeks, squeezing them together. With her head trapped, Harley can’t do anything but clenching her eyes shut and braces herself for a headbutt. It never comes. Instead of the pain on her head, it is soft lips that are crashing against her own.

If Ivy wanted to play dirty, two can very well play that game. Protests forgotten, Harley grips on Ivy’s hips and pulls her forward. Their fronts press fully against each other, all soft curves and smooth dips. The living plant on Ivy’s bodysuit curls ahead, brushing every part of Harley that is uncovered by her clothes. She takes on Ivy’s bottom lip and bites until she tastes acid, yet Ivy deepens the kiss. Something bitter and then nectar-sweet soon replace the sourness as Ivy’s tongue pushes past her teeth. She welcomes it with a low moan of approval, sucking on the sweetness until with one last flick over her lips, Ivy pulls back.

It takes a moment far too long for Harley to gather herself, lightheaded and breathless from the kiss. Ivy’s hands are on her shoulders now, hers still grasping her hips. The scratches high on her cheekbone are nothing but mere faint red lines. When her eyes flutter open, it’s like she is seeing Ivy for the very first time. All green and red and beautiful and lovely and—

Oh.

_Oh._

So _this_ is what Dinah means by _just fuck her already_. The sexual one, not the piss-her-off one. Blue eyes widen almost comically with the revelation, only to see Ivy smiling at her—the first time she ever does that without mocking or turning it into one of her infuriating smirks. The flutters of butterflies in Harley’s chest escalate into gallops of unicorns, all puking and shitting glittery rainbows.

 _Fuck_.

How can she not realize this sooner? Like way way back in Arkham. Ivy is drop-dead gorgeous, smells like flowers (when she’s not pissed), all powerful metahuman who just wants to protect the Earth. Maybe the way she’s protecting it isn’t conventional and her hatred on people can be too much sometimes, but she’s just misunderstood, like the Joker. Up this close, Harley can see the eerie glow of her pretty green eyes, exactly like when they first met and she tried to kill—

It is then that Harley realized that _Poison Ivy_ just _kissed_ her, tongue and all.

_Shit, shit! I’m gonna die! I’m gonna fuckin’ die!_

Ivy, unaware of Harley’s inner turmoil, is still staring at her with thoughtful but calculative look. At last, she gives a self-satisfied nod and steps out of Harley’s personal space. “You only need it annually,” she says.

“What?” Harley croaks. “The kiss?” Because if she was really going to die, she can do with another right now, or like, a dozen.

“The shot,” Ivy answers. “My body adapts to everything I encounter. I’d have to update the shot too.” Her excitement demurs, although her smile remains. “I never had to vaccinate anyone against me.”

Jumbled words of _misanthrope, poisonous, recluse, eco-terrorist_ fill Harley’s mind. Of course a kiss means nothing for Poison Ivy. It’s _her_ thing. She kills a lot of people with her kiss. It isn’t intimacy. The fact that she vaccinated Harley to be immune to her, though, is a total breakthrough. Harleen would have psychoanalyzed the shit out of it. Harley, however, simply takes Ivy’s hand and pulls her closer. The contact seems to surprise the metahuman, just as Harley is as she eyes their hands and finds hers doesn’t start to burn.

“We can play and I won’t cry no more?”

“Yes, among other things.” Ivy _hates_ it when Harley gets teary and snotty, dripping her bodily fluids all over her babies, just because of her natural defense mechanism. Also it’s getting tiring to entertain her childish fight-play when it’s obvious that she has stopped trying to avenge the Joker some weeks ago. They work well together, it’s time for Harley to realize that too. “This can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Harley halts mid-swinging their arms. That is so _not_ what she has in mind. But Ivy grins at her again, small and a little unsure but also hopeful, and everything in her just melts away like she is flushed with acid.

“Yeah, you’re right, Red.”

She is so fucked.

* * *

It has been a year since Harleen got a kitty plushie for Joker. Everyone has moved on long ago. What is left of the clown prince of crime are tales of crazy schemes, manic laughter, and parents warning their children from wanting clowns in their birthday parties.

Harley thought by now Joker and she would be married, ruling over Gotham as its king and queen of crime, taking whatever and whoever they wanted whenever they pleased. Instead, he is six-feet under while she is still building her way up as Gotham’s number one mercenary, living with her best friend, and pining over the current crime queen of Gotham. The last bit has become quite a problem as of late.

Being Ivy’s friend is great. Awesome. Yay girl power and all that. They run a couple of capers together, with satisfying result. Harley likes their dynamic. She likes Ivy—really _really_ likes her that she’s going to explode if she didn’t do something soon. She can’t brood or sulk or think about feelings, she _acts_. She is short of singing _I don’t wanna be your friend I want to kiss your lips_ on the top of her lungs, but technically they did that already and it doesn’t mean anything for Ivy, other than to test the effectiveness of her homemade vaccine. _That_ is the problem.

When Dinah ended their FWB arrangement, she started sparring with Ivy. It was a great output on her excessive energy, though not much on her sexual frustration. Nowadays, however, they don’t do that either anymore. Sure, she gets to crush plenty of skulls on daily basis, but no one puts an actual fight. It’s like beating a dead horse. No fun. She tries to boink the fuck out of someone several times. But after Dinah, there is only one way up and with a certain redhead occupying her mind, there is just no way out.

It would be a lot easier if Ivy just told her what she wants, jerks and pushes her around. It’s the kind of map to someone’s heart that Harley understands. Without such guide, she has to come up with her own ideas, that she luckily has the best whenever she is drunk. It is how she ends up roaming over the dark street of Gotham, kinda drunk, with a drink she stole from the latest bar she crashed and accidentally set on fire.

She comes to an abrupt stop on the intersection. The road is pretty empty at three in the morning, other than the tank truck and its driver taking a leak behind it. She’s still sulking over her lack of love life when her eyes wander up the road to ACE Chemicals’ industrial processing plant—the same one she broke in months ago—twinkling like a beacon with its various unnecessary spotlights.

Ivy has her eyes locked on the company since forever, has killed four batches of its CEOs throughout the years for illegal waste dumping. Harley has seen her using her power in large scale before. It’s no small feat to erect trees all around Gotham, but she did it overnight. Pollution is on its all low and Harley actually sees bees and butterflies nowadays. She can ruin the whole factory easily. She doesn’t get why Ivy doesn’t just…steal a truck filled with gas and ram it to the fucking factory.

“I have the best idea!”

She is Harley Quinn, always doing crazy things, always being impetuous, always kissing people. It’s just her Wednesday. Throwing the glass over her shoulder, she skips her way to the idle truck. The driver is still taking a leak, which is quite concerning, but she is too tipsy to tell him to get it checked. She jerks the door open, jumps into the cabin, puts the gear in and floors the gas. The truck full of fuel is heading straight to ACE Chemicals.

“This is where it all began, Puddin’.”

It was where he was rebirth. Where she was rebirth. And the place he had wanted to take over, to leak its vats full of waste chemicals all over Gotham, to see everything drowned in his sauce of freedom. If he hadn’t been too full of himself, he would realize how doing that would piss some other powerful people than Batsy out there. The rest of the rogues don’t want anything to do with Joker, but one tree-hugger metahuman wouldn’t stand still in front of the possibility of ecological disaster.

Poison Ivy did what Batman was too afraid to do, fucking Joker on the ass and be done with him forever. She had the clown delivered straight to GCPD headquarter. _Hippomane mancinella_ sprouted on the sidewalk with the Joker skewered. Its trunk went through his ass to his mouth, bypassing all of his internal organs, and setting his lips wide open with head thrown back—his last laugh.

This one is Harley’s.

Once the truck is gaining speed, she sticks her boot on the gas pedal and leaves it there. Opening the door, she doesn’t even think before she jumps out of the vehicle. She rolls on the asphalt a couple of times like a tumbling colorful pompom, thanks to her homemade amazing jacket. Her body comes to a stop and she sits up just in time to see the fireworks—all blue, pink, and green. She throws her head back with a maniacal laugh.

When the firework is replaced by just fire, Harley limps to the nearest tree on the sidewalk. It is way bigger than it should be, over the width of her arms as she climbed up like a monkey. She finds the highest and sturdiest branch to settle. Swinging her legs as she watches the fire, she knocks on the trunk.

“Your ma gonna come, right?”

The tree doesn’t react.

Harley grins. She knows Ivy will come and she is right, Ivy arrives before the cops do. Vines slither from out of nowhere to drop her on the roof of the building next to the tree Harley is on. They are on each other’s turf. It’s kinda funny. Still tipsy, Harley giggles to herself.

Ivy doesn’t take her eyes away from the raging fire blowing sky-high, now burning in angry red after the initial firework. She can feel the heat even though they are quite far away. Sirens ring below. Harley quiets down, staring at the orange glow dancing on Ivy’s tan skin. Alternating red and blue splash over her silhouette. Even stunned, she is stunning.

Harley’s heating cheeks have nothing to do with the fire. She clears her throat to grab Ivy’s attention. “I did it for you, Red,” she says, puffing her chest.

Ivy remains silent for a moment longer than comfortable. “Why?” she eventually asks.

“‘Cause I love ya.”

There. Harley has laid out all of her cards on the table, pulled her heart out for Ivy to trample on.

“Thank you, Harley.”

The instinctive smile Harley had falls midway. “‘Thank you’? ‘Thank you’?!” she shouts in disbelief. It’s always either _let’s fuck_ or _sorry, Harley_ followed by _but maybe if you_ and whatever her love interest wants her to. Change her hair style, wear revealing clothes, break them out of an asylum, jump into a vat of chemicals—that sort of things. What does _thank you_ even mean? What’s with her green and their inability to compute love?

“Yes?” Ivy tilts her head a bit, frowning, and it’s so very unfair for her to look both hot and cute at the same time. Harley throws the one boot she has left at her, which she easily sidesteps. “What is this about?”

Without a word, Harley drops off the branch. Her hands grasp into its thick width like she would a beam. Within one powerful swing, she flings herself off the tree and into the roof. With her newfound immunity comes the boost on her strength and agility. Two somersaults midair and she lands on her feet, arms stretch wide in a perfect pose and an instinctive grin on her lips.

Ivy feels compelled to clap, so she does.

Immediately, Harley stalks to where Ivy is standing, stomping her way with a scowl on her face. “You’re supposed to test me,” she says, jabbing a finger on Ivy’s chest. “Make me prove myself to you. Tell me to shoot someone or blow somethin’ up.”

“I don’t want you to be hurt.”

Which is the truth. All along. Harley’s accusing finger falls away from Ivy. She stares at her, blinking slowly, but isn’t really looking at her. Ivy is right. Except for the first time they fought and Harley caught her by surprise, she never hurt her on purpose. Even during their sparring, she can tell that Ivy holds back a lot.

“What is this really about?”

“Joker.”

It hasn’t been a year yet since Ivy killed him. The tree is still standing on GCPD’s sidewalk, a sort of commemoration for the brutal act. The cops got their ME to cut Joker in half and took off what was left of him in pieces, like the trash he was, instead of cutting down the tree. They know they will be the next one fucked by a tree if they dared to.

Still, Ivy dips her head like she understood and that’s the end of it. She will never apologize for what she did, Harley knows. She faces the burning factory again, following the smoke going up in the sky. “It’s an effective way to stop them. The air pollutions, on the other hand…” she ends it with a sigh.

Harley gulps, suddenly aware of how much environmental damage she has done by blowing up an industrial processing plant. The Joker got skewered by a tree for _planning_ to leak vats of chemicals and here she just burned the whole thing down. She doesn’t want to die—not anymore, even though being dead means she gets to be with him. She likes her new life of crime, her amazing superpower and badass immunity, her smash-and-grab solo jobs and the complicated ones with Ivy, playing tag with Batman, annoying Roman out of spite, hanging out with Dinah, and on top of it all, she has Ivy with her.

Glancing to the side, she too becomes aware of her close proximity to Ivy. Less than a step away and Ivy isn’t even looking at her. There is a switchblade tucked in her shorts. Roughly six months ago, she would have swiped it out and gutted the plant woman in the next second, made a messy flower arrangement like she did the Joker while ensuring her place in the underworld throne. But she doesn’t want any of that anymore, doesn’t want to hurt Ivy either.

“Sorry, Red. But I really love you, ya know.” Because it’s just who Harley is. She does something over and over again like a broken record, or the definition of insanity, depending on who’s answering. “And not in the friendly way. More like I’d like to kiss you and screw yer brain out kind of way,” she adds in haste.

Ivy is silent for far too long.

“I have seen love. It is a burden more than a joy.”

 _Oh_. Harley sighs over the ache in her chest. _So it’s a no_. She plops down on the concrete, knees bend up to study the scrapes she got from jumping out of the speeding truck earlier. The blood has dried out and she forgot about it, but everything kinda stings now.

“But I care about you more than I should.”

As if to prove the point, Ivy crouches next to Harley and puts a hand over the scuff mark. Immediately, her palm excretes a sticky mixture of aloe vera and olive oil. It soothes the abrasion, but not Harley’s heart.

 _More than your plant?_ Harley won’t like the answer, so she keeps her head bowed, pouting.

“Is that what love is for you?”

A part of Harley wants to shout _yes, yes! It is! Be with me!_ , but for once, she doesn’t want to be impetuous and fuck this up. “I don’t know,” she says under her breath. She really doesn’t know. All of her love is toeing the line of obsession.

The hand on her knee touches her chin to lift her head up, fingers no longer sticky. Ivy is smiling at her. “Maybe I’m more human than I want to admit,” she says.

When Ivy dips her head toward Harley, smelling sweet and fresh like lilies, there is no knockout pollen blown her way. When their lips meet, it isn’t part of a scientific experiment. Instead of being laced with poison, it’s filled with hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t know Harley is bi until I watched _Birds of Prey_. It’s been really wild for me ever since.
> 
> Hmu at [my tumblr](http://fujinolover.tumblr.com)


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